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Amp more important than speakers?

The common wisdom seems to be the opposite (at least from speaker makers), but I have tried the many speakers that have come thru my house on lesser amps or my midfi A/V receiver and something was always very wrong, and things often sounded worse than cheap speakers.
On the other hand, I have tried many humble speakers on my my really good amps (& source) and heard really fine results.

Recently I tried my Harbeth SHL5s (& previously my Aerial 10Ts, Piega P10s, and others) on the receiver or even my Onkyo A9555 (which is nice with my 1985 Ohm Walsh 4s, which I consider mid-fi), and the 3 high end speakers sounded boomy, bland, opaque.

But when I tried even really cheap speakers on my main setup (Edge NL12.1 w/tube preamp) I got very nice results
(old Celestion SL6s, little Jensen midfi speakers).

So I don't think it's a waste of resources to get great amplification and sources even for more humble speakers.
My Harbeth SHL5s *really* benefit from amps & sources that are far more expensive than the Harbeths.

Once I had Aerial 10Ts that sounded like new speakers with vocals to die for when I drove them with a Pass X350 to replace an Aragon 8008.

Oh well, thanks for reading my rambling thoughts here...

So I think I would avoid pairing good speakers with lesser amps,
rgs92

Showing 2 responses by plato

plato
1,543 posts
 
Elizabeth, you're probably going to laugh at this, but it's true.

A while back I bought a used pair of Maggie SMGa series II speakers for use in my smaller room (I had 1.6's in there previously but they overpowered the room in the treble).

I was not having great luck with amplification. For a while I used a Parasound P/LD-2000 line preamp into a VTL ST-85 amp and it sounded ok but not great. The ST-85 actually sounded quite good in triode mode but lacked power.

I tried the W4S ST-250 but that was not a great match. Then for a while I used a VTL TL-2.5 line preamp with a Quicksilver GLA 40-watt tube amp. I liked this combo quite a bit but again, ultimately it was somewhat laid back and lacked power.

The other day, just for laughs I took an Onkyo TX-SR705 surround receiver (over 100 wpc and WRAT analog amps that could be set for 4 Ohms). At first I didn't like the presentation, but as I fine tuned it and tried its Pure Audio and CD-Direct modes things began looking up. Next I put a ferrite bead on the power cord and put a weight on the metal cover to damp vibration.

I kid you not, it came to life and is sounding pretty outstanding. It throws a coherent "wall of sound" that to me is reminiscent of listening to Maggie Tympani 1D's with Audio Research electronics back in the day.

Mind you I'm not saying the VTL/Onkyo combo can't be beat, but I am saying it's a lot of fun and probably the best sounding (or most synergistic) amplification chain I've used with the little Maggies in this room so far. So I guess I'm going backwards in order to move forward.
plato
1,543 posts
 
Weseixas, I agree, I think some of the Onkyo amps/receivers sound quite good, which is what prompted me to put it in the system in the first place and now I'm glad I did.

I also want to say that my slant is that the loudspeaker should be matched to the room first and then the proper amp to drive that speaker in its intended acoustic environment can be sought (based on the speaker load, sensitivity, and how loud the owner wants to play his/her music in the particular room).
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